A Bilingual Blog

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

These are very sad days in México City. There are still children trapped inside of what's left of the Colegio Enrique Rébsamen in México City after the earthquake yesterday. The infants were and are as young as preschool age, and over thirty of them have already been confirmed dead.

This happened right on the anniversary of another tectonic movement in 1985 which left over ten thousand people dead, and two weeks after an 8.1 magnitude earthquake that shook most of Southwestern México. Classes have been cancelled in Puebla, Hidalgo, Oaxaca and other areas, and a state of emergency has been declared.

Sunday, June 11, 2017

Hello, are you familiar with the jaguarundi? My guess is that you are probably not. It is a beautiful, shy feline that once thrived in the Southwest United States, but that is now almost extinct thanks to us humans. The remaining ones can be found along the Rio Grande Valley, in Texas, hiding in scarce patches of land where they can hunt during the night. And how about the jaguar? I am sure that you're more familiar with this cat, but you probably think of Africa when he comes to mind. Surprisingly, like the jaguarito, jaguars once roamed freely in the United States, but they also got in the way of humans, and went extinct fifty years ago.

The near disappearance of the jaguarundi and the fate of the jaguar may soon become the future at least 49 other species if a wall is built along the México border. That is according to the study "Conservation Biogeography of the US-México Border: a Transcontinental Risk Assessment of Barriers to Animal Dispersal." The research, conducted by professors Jesse Lasky, Walter Jetz and Timothy Keitt, says that among the animals that would be affected are amphibians like the giant marine toad and the ensatina, reptiles like the Great Basin collar lizard and the massasauga, and mammals like the California pocket mouse, the Arizona great squirrel and the Northern Baja deermouse.

Monday, January 30, 2017

We all know that President Donald Trump ran his whole campaign by viciously attacking his neighbors, the Mexican people. On August 31st of last year, just hours after meeting with President Enrique Peña Nieto, who in the spirit of friendship had extended an invitation to both presidential candidates, Trump addressed a rally in Phoenix in his usual exhilarated style: "Are you ready? Are you ready? On day one, we will begin working, on an impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful, southern border wall." Mister Trump sounded so excited, that his rampage sounded as if it had been crafted for a song, and as usual, his ardent supporters erupted in joy. After catching his breath, he went on with his attack: "We will use the best technology, including above and below ground sensors. That's for the tunnels. Remember that: Above and below. Above and below ground sensors."

Monday, January 9, 2017

Things are as hot as habanero peppers right now South of the border. Mexicans, already wounded by the express visit of President-Elect Donald Trump last year, and the devaluation of their peso due to his hateful campaign rhetoric, now find themselves dealing with a twenty percent increase in gas prices. Unrest has erupted throughout the country since the beginning of the year, and the looting of stores has been widespread. Thousands and thousands of businesses have had to shut down, and what does President Enrique Peña Nieto do? He angers his people even more, showing that the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) has not abandoned its old bad habits.

Monday, December 26, 2016

Lesli Hernández was at the San Pablito Market of Tultepec this fateful December 20th. She had gone there with her grandmother, Eva Báez Palacios, who wanted to buy fireworks to resell them at her shop in the City of Nicolás Romero. Leslie's uncle, Yasmani González, and her two-year-old child were also there when all of a sudden, a powerful blast shook the place.

"At the moment of the explosion, I turned around and there was a huge smoke cloud," Leslie recounted in an interview with Claudia Solera, a reporter for Excelsior TV. "And you could not see anything. I just heard my uncle screaming to my grandma: 'mom!'"

Monday, December 12, 2016

HIV is not a death sentence anymore. Well, at least that's the case here in the U.S., where the latest drugs are avalailable for free if you lack access to healthcare. Unfortunately south of the border, in places like Monterrey, Veracruz and México City, the stories of many HIV patients feature disbelief, anxiety, impotence and horror. Following are just a few of them.

In the CAPASITS clinic at the Regional Hospital of Veracruz, 215 bottles of antriretrovirals went missing during the months of August, September and October of this year. The CAPASITS clinics are run by Mexico's federal government, and their acronym stands for "Ambulatory Centers for the Prevention and Care of AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases).

Sunday, March 6, 2016

Jeb Bush: out. Lindsay Graham: out. Ben Carson and Chris Christie: also out. Who will be the next one to go? Will it be Jon Kasich or Marco Rubio? The Republican Party: the elephant, the anti-immigrant force of the United States, is convulsing, has hit a wall, and it seems like its establishment does not know what to do next to have a realistic shot at winning the presidency. And the reason of all of this is its front runner, Donald Trump, and his supporters, who have turned this political machine on its head.